Friday, September 10, 2010

Anonymous Light and Personal Darkness

Ever repeatedly encounter a term you'd never heard of before? Happened to me last week. The first time was in the Balthasar book referenced at the end of yesterday's post. The term is "anonymous Christian." He speaks of the "hidden grace" that prompts men to selflessly engage in inspired action to care for the world. Such men are anonymous Christians.

In one sense the term can be seen as magnanimous, in that it eliminates the obnoxious and simpleminded idea that God condemns anyone who doesn't literally accept Jesus as their personal savior (for who would presume to say exactly who, what, where, why, when, and how Christ is?). But if the recipient of the designation is not equally magnanimous, I suppose they might see it as presumptuous and condescending -- in other words, you're only doing good because you're secretly a Christian.

But the point is more subtle than that. Rather, the idea is that just because God takes a form, it doesn't mean that he is limited by that form. I mean, obviously. Indeed, to enclose God in a particular form is what we call an intrinsic heresy, not to mention idolatry. It's fine for savages, but not for Raccoons. As Magnus wrote in a comment yesterday, "The first Christians were not going 'Hey we've got a new and better religion!', they were saying 'That which you have worshiped without knowing it, we know it and we've come to tell you.'"

But the essential formlessness of God should should not be taken to imply its converse: that God is not the form through which it has pleased him to incarnate. In a way, this is in keeping with the simple fact that God is always both immanent and transcendent, so that he will of necessity "spill out" of whatever form we use to try to contain him.

Nevertheless, we must make the effort to contain him, especially through the channels he himself has authorized. These acquire a particular power, as seen in phenomena from Torah study to the Eucharist to the sacred spaces that are simultaneously revealed and created by great cathedrals.

If the revelation represents a vertical ingression of divine energies, then tradition represents the horizontal nurturing and prolongation of those energies. One might compare the former to rain, the latter to a river. But the river, of course, ends in the open sea, which is the point of tradition. In other words, tradition should not be revered for its own sake, but only insofar as it floats your boat down that sacred river.

As mentioned yesterday, every culture is situated somewhere along its own sacred river. Even (especially!) the secular left has its own creation myths, its own prophets, its own unexamined (pseudo)vertical sources. But in naively denying the vertical, the radical secularist simply sells us all down the river, a river with no destination. And in turning the cosmos upside down and inside out, he locates Eden up ahead, not behind.

Thus, according to this myth, once the state is large and intrusive enough, we shall all live in Obama's socialist paradise, in which the wealth that is no longer created is well and truly "spread around." Others will just call it poverty.

But what would be the purpose of such a world? Even supposing the leftist's utopia were possible, what would people do with it? The dim ones would continue playing video games, seeking tenure, and watching MSNBC. But the gifted ones would do what they already do with their slack: use it to explore and colonize the vertical. I say, why place one's hope in the left, when eternity is already available to you while you wait?

If there are anonymous Christians, then the corollary is that there are "anonymous adversaries," or whatever you wish to call them. Not only are they necessary, but they are inevitable, given the nature of the pneumacosmic economy, for if there is O, then there must be Ø. And if there is Ø, then there are beings who will "incarnate" it. These people are "flesh made word," even though such a thing is strictly impossible (again, it is the surd made flesh).

Back to Balthasar and the supramundane Light that lights this otherwise endarkened world. Among other things, this is the light that enlightens the anonymous Christian, and furthermore, exposes the artificial light of various manmade ideologies. In other words, when the Light shines on them, it is analogous to the sun shining on a little lightbulb that only appears bright because the shades are drawn. Open the shades, and ideology is revealed for what it is.

The "landscape of humanity... is lit by a glow of reconciliation," "which in an almost inexplicable manner brings the estranged world back to reality." In light of this Light, man's strongest searchlights are turned back upon themselves, since all light is only the one Light. And "it is precisely this 'anonymous light' of Christianity that lights up all places and all characters, unique, unparalleled, penetrating, that irritates the ideologists and stirs them up to persecute and fight for its extermination" (Balthasar).

Now, "can anyone forbid this light to shine?" You can only kill someone once, and that obviously didn't work.

Which reminds me. Why is the whole world up in arms about a kook who wants to burn a Koran, when, if it were a Bible, he could apply for an NEA grant? I suppose because for a Christian, the worst blasphemy has already occurred, and the Light overcame it. Burning a Bible is like trying to set fire to the sun. Good luck with that.

Thought for the day: "'[A]biding in the source'... is understandably an act of a very personal nature that we perform consciously and involves us in being open, ready to listen to and obey God's word, and in being prepared to give time and contemplation in order to allow the rain from heaven to soak its way in. For only when we have received the word of God can we rightly return it in the words of prayer from the depths of our own hearts" (Balthasar).

51 Comments:

I like that second photo - FL's reflection in the wood is an interesting effect.

If there are anonymous Christians, then the corollary is that there are "anonymous adversaries," or whatever you wish to call them. Not only are they necessary, but they are inevitable, given the nature of the pneumacosmic economy, for if there is O, then there must be Ø.

Reminds me a bit of this article over at RightNetwork. Though not anonymously Christian, it does a good job of describing the anonymous adversarial position.

Speaking of light, revelation, cultures rubbing up against each other, and confined spaces, there is a great scene in Quest for Fire...

Barry Gibb stumbles upon this strange culture. After living among them for some time and gaining their trust, he is "allowed" into their "cathedral" to witness a sacred event. A giant space is opened up "in" front of him, yet it was there all along.

Btw, that movie ends with the pregnancy of a baby, I believe (it's been awhile since I've seen it - 20 years at least). Anyway, the way the father treats (preciously) the pregnant mother is interestingly in-line with the point you make in your baby, I mean, book, Bob. So really, in a sense, it's the end of the movie, but the beginning of man, properly understood. Have you seen that movie, Bob?

"He speaks of the "hidden grace" that prompts men to selflessly engage in inspired action to care for the world."

I just kind of figured that this was what you were supposed to do in life. I'm not sure it's sefless as much as it is a selfish act to avoid crippling guilt, but that may just be me.

Plus, you have that entire church/bible inspired fear in the back of your mind that you're going to hell if you don't give everything you have to the poor. I got into an argument with my wife the other day about that one.

I find some of your analyses interesting, but this error leads you astray much of the time. It seems you make this mistake because you rely on ordinary logical form and superimpose it onto a 'subject' which it doesn't apply because it is not ordinary. What makes the divine divine is that has no other, no opposition.

This isn't to say there is no such thing as confusion or ignorance. The world is full of such things. In fact, I am indicting you of confusion. But ignorance and confusion are not manifestations of Ø, but simply part of the morphological plurality of the world. They seem to be evils, but as the Tao Te Ching says,

"Thus the Master is available to all peopleand doesn't reject anyone.He is ready to use all situationsand doesn't waste anything.This is called embodying the light.

What is a good man but a bad man's teacher?What is a bad man but a good man's job?If you don't understand this, you will get lost,however intelligent you are.It is the great secret."

I find some of your analyses interesting, but this error leads you astray much of the time. It seems you make this mistake because you rely on ordinary logical form and superimpose it onto a 'subject' which it doesn't apply because it is not ordinary. What makes the divine divine is that has no other, no opposition.

This isn't to say there is no such thing as confusion or ignorance. The world is full of such things. In fact, I am indicting you of confusion. But ignorance and confusion are not manifestations of Ø, but simply part of the morphological plurality of the world. They seem to be evils, but as the Tao Te Ching says,

"Thus the Master is available to all peopleand doesn't reject anyone.He is ready to use all situationsand doesn't waste anything.This is called embodying the light.

What is a good man but a bad man's teacher?What is a bad man but a good man's job?If you don't understand this, you will get lost,however intelligent you are.It is the great secret."

I hope you don't take this attempt at a correction as an attack.

****

Actually, I am not relying on "ordinary logic" to arrive at the above formulation, but metaphysics. In contrast, your metaphysical error results from the application of profane logic to the suprasensible. Bottom line: God is the world, but the world is not God. And because the world is not God -- i.e., is more or less distant from its source -- this necessarily introduces the possibility of error, sin, ugliness, and other accidents. In a sense, everything that is not O is Ø, for "there is none good but the One."

Well I certainly agree one would be dim (in the way leftists are) if one continued to seek in video games "purpose and meaning" for any length of time. Nonetheless, like most trivial pursuits they have their charms. The technical skill required to create a modern video game is stunningly deep -- vastly more than most other areas of software engineering. The various branches of the military use "video games" extensively in their training, and in fact the Army produces and distributes one ("America's Army") as a recruiting tool (this fact infuriates leftists for many reasons).

I had a friend in Montreal some years back who was a math prof at McGill, and among the top-ranked chess players in that city. He made fun of the ChessMaster game I was running on my laptop. You can guess the rest (it slaughtered him). So for the military, for learning chess, and frankly for plain old fun now and then (e.g., Wii Sports Resort) they aren't all bad in all cases.

After making contact with O and having a conversion experience, a person may enter/exit inhabit or play with any religion she chooses to, because she is now suprareligious. She is bigger than they are.

Bob is an example. He is all religions, can be a member at will or not, because he envelops them. Because he is in contact with O, he is in an overview position.

Tune in, turn on, and lift off. Be above taking the large view. You now see religions are tools to be used wisely, nothing more. They are templates but not the actual thing at hand.

You don't derive meaning from computer games,you give meaning to them. They are below you, vertically. The worlds below us are those we create, the worlds above us are those that create us. So if there is a movement of meaning involved in playing a game - and there sometimes is - it consists of drawing in meaning from a lower world and applying it to a lower, thereby raising its level of reality somewhat.

Pouring one's substance into a lower world without a corresponding or greater intake from above will dilute the essence of a person. This is the sad state of the "otaku", the nerd who becomes estranged from the three-dimensional world and finds himself more at home in the two-dimensional. A lower world indeed.

Ack! Mind parasites must be messing with my typing. That should have said "drawing in meaning from a HIGHER world", obviously, since meaning is derived from above, rather than below.

On that note, not everything that is "higher" than man is therefore good. Traditionalists place the evil spirits in the dimension above ours, even though in another sense Hell is thought of as being "geographically" below. The worship of spirit as such is a dangerous path, which seems also to be on the rise lately. But I should write about that elsewhere. We now return you to your scheduled program.

Magnus is of course coonologically correct, that anything can and in a way must be sanctified by the superior ringtailed master. This is indeed the whole challenge -- of bringing the Light down into every activity. Thus, things that can cause real soul damage to flatlanders may be perfectly appropriate for the Raccoon. It's not hypocrisy, any more than one is a hypocrite for not letting a child drive a car, or not giving steak to your infant to choke on.

"Thus, according to this myth, once the state is large and intrusive enough, we shall all live in Obama's socialist paradise, in which the wealth that is no longer created is well and truly "spread around." Others will just call it poverty."

Of course, the dispensers of this poverty will be exempt from it, just as communist leaders are exempt from the hell they dispense.

I find it curious that neo-marxists get so upset when they are called on their rank hypocrisy while clinging to said hypocrisy.Or, perhaps once all the created wealth is gone then they will begin to notice (and covet) the utopia their leaders have or the unholy of unholys, so to speak.

We've seen it before. Just like the jihadists, whenever they don't have an immediate target to attack they turn on each other.

"Which reminds me. Why is the whole world up in arms about a kook who wants to burn a Koran, when, if it were a Bible, he could apply for an NEA grant."

Aye. And the left's sudden concern for our troops is to die for.

The Associated Press refuses to report or publish any photos of a koran burning but they have no problem with reporting the US flag burning, or desecration of anything Christian. The leftist media also has no problem publishing state secrets, or photos of Abu Gahraib at every opportunity, and that is responsible for far more deaths an some imbeciles burning a koran.

Besides, the press (as usual misses th real story which is the reaction to just the threat of burning a koran and the lack of "moderate" muslims that are decrying those reactions (same can be said of the motoon story).lly, the left can no longer truthfully say that they champion speech, if indeed they ever could.

I have been listening to a lot of Ambient-type music lately. I find that sometimes it's the only music that I *want* to listen to. My own music endeavors are tending towards a more "ambient" approach.

But it makes me wonder about the meaning of ambient music...what role, albeit minor, does it play in our culture and our own psychospiritual economy.

Western Classical Music from the Baroque to the late Romantic period was a highly *narrative* art form. Fugue, Sonata form, Opera etc were all highly dramatic and adhered to a clear narrative arc.

Along comes Debussy, Satie etc (the FRENCH!!!) and that begins to break down. Many of the musical innovations of the 20th century could be said to constitute the perhaps willful *breakdown* of this clear narrative.

I guess what I've been questioning is how this lack of narrative relates to the lack of a strong narrative in our culture (other than say "follow what you feel" which happens to be the personal motto of a songwriter I play with) and to the breakdown of "Man as Such".

NOTE: Despite the suspension of "music saturday" I hope that my bringing up my musical thoughts are not *too* random. But there are few, if any, other places to discuss music in the way it can be here at OC. Of course, feel free to ignore me too!

A critical point that goes unnoticed is that it is the left that is "Islamophobic," which means to fear Islam. They are exceedingly fearful of inflaming Muslim passions and being subject to a reprisal, thus the New York Times' refusal to publish photos of the infamous cartoons, when they have no problem publishing a photo of Piss Christ.

In contrast, I don't fear Islam. Rather, I don't like it -- at least the way it is understood and practiced by the majority of its adherents.

You have to realize that prior to recorded music, the only music the vast majority of people ever heard was the music they made with their family or tribe. Our situation vis-a-vis music is truly sui generis. For example, we can hear a string quartet in our bedroom at any time, when this was something reserved only for royalty not too long ago.

I find that ambient music is an effective facilitator of vertical recollection, so it serves an entirely different purpose than forward-pushing music.

Noye: When I say "desicrate" I mean the intent of the desicrators. Obviously, those who burn bibles or destroy christian symbols (or indeed, the American flag) can't actually desicrate those symbols, for one can't desicrate what one cannot touch.Those symbols are too powerful to be desicrated.

The same can't be said neo-marxist or muslim symbols, but that's the way of the flatlanders.

"This is the sad state of the "otaku", the nerd who becomes estranged from the three-dimensional world and finds himself more at home in the two-dimensional. A lower world indeed."

As I said, it didn't really work.

Although I did get the side effect of the ability to rapidly analyze financial and stock market informationl, with the ability to kind of hit the major turns in the market. It really wasn't worth the tradeoff, however.

"But in naively denying the vertical, the radical secularist simply sells us all down the river, a river with no destination. And in turning the cosmos upside down and inside out, he locates Eden up ahead, not behind."

"Thus, according to this myth, once the state is large and intrusive enough, we shall all live in Obama's socialist paradise, in which the wealth that is no longer created is well and truly "spread around." Others will just call it poverty."

Magnus said "So if there is a movement of meaning involved in playing a game - and there sometimes is - it consists of drawing in meaning from a HIGHER world and applying it to a lower, thereby raising its level of reality somewhat.

Pouring one's substance into a lower world without a corresponding or greater intake from above will dilute the essence of a person."

And as usual nails it. As with most anything, if improperly used (you are used by it, rather than your using it in a proper context), it can be bad, but can just as easily be used benignly or even beneficially.

Reminds me of the tale of the shocked young monk, astounded by the master picking up a women and carrying her across the stream, and the master finally turns and says "I put her down after crossing the stream, why are you still carrying her?"

(I really hate coming to a thread late, comments have been disappearo'd... phooey)

anyone else get kind of a cosmic sadness from this when they change chords?...most any music can be 'ambient' if you turn it low 'eno'ugh---that was eno's 1st eureka!: hearing someone's gift of music played too softly and being bedridden, unable to rise & raise it.

then there's an experience i had when my mom was dying and the days were very stressed & difficult: i tried to go to sleep upstairs but i heard somewhere downstairs like from a tv, the kind of music skitch henderson'd play on johnny carson during commercials that you'd hear them finish as the show came back on air. smokin' jazzy showbiz pizzazz with multi trumpeteers soloing at once ...ie the opposite of sleeptime fare!there was no tv or radio on downstairs.then i heard another band the same kind ALSO playing their ensembled hearts out ---tinny and fast & lotsa notes....of course these sounds were in my head, demons at their bizness.

somewhere in my collection i have a mingus record that approximates the cacophony

Man, there's a "conservative" fringe out there which is every bit as batshit crazy as any leftist. The one guy on that thread who speaks out against an American-led nuclear genocide of hundreds of millions of men, women and children is treated to a flurry of racist taunts (because these Lucianne.com mouth-breathers think he's black).

That site used to be one of the best. Now it's a holding tank for the right's answer to A.N.S.W.E.R.

NB,I don’t read the site, or anything like it on any regular basis, barely skimmed the post… but with your link curiosity got the better of me, and if those qualify as ‘batshit crazy’ I think I’d like to live where you are.

(forgive me if I overstep, but I seem to notice a tendency on your part to almost want to... lament... 'conservatives' who are racist. Other than the obvious point that there's more than enough stupid people to go around, is there a point?)

I know you've read the aninnymouse comments we get here - Do you really think they stack up against those?

Stupid and over the top suggestions for going about acting for a proper motive (responding to aggression), hardly stack up against the flat out racism and downright venomous hatred of the Right & Tea Party crowd - or anything smacking of the Good, the Beautiful and the True - which I regularly come in to contact with.

Personally I’m generally an anti-social hermit by temperament, and I’ve been heavily involved in putting on our 9/12 event in St. Louis (happening, of course, tomorrow, 9/12, at the Arch), socializing with and organizing LOTS of people, and I can vouch for having to listen to more dingy opinions than I could use for a decade… but they still don’t stack up to the moonbat left I’ve heard my fill of.

Shallow, low brow, poorly thought out, predictable… sure, but if that qualifies as ‘a flurry of racist taunts’… again… I wish I lived in your neighborhood, I know we had to put up with one hell of a lot worse when I played in a band, than that mostly benign stupidity.

Speaking of video games, I quite agree with Magnus' observation. In my experience, the right games can serve as an excellent way to sharpen one's brain, for instance. However, as DH just observed some of the more cinematic games have had a disastrous effect on movies.

We're watching Sherlock Holmes. I was hoping that if I pretend it's simply the names that are similar, it would be entertaining. The problem is, all the characters are straight out of a video game, with all the developmental depth one would expect. Their primary purpose is to give a reason for the action sequences, and that's pretty much it. Which would be fine if that were only the case in this movie, but it seems to be a trend.

I think that attacking the United States -- by far the greatest and most decent nation that has ever existed -- is the moral equivalent of murdering a judge or assassinating a president in a democracy. It is an attack on the very basis and possibility of justice and decency. Such actions deserve the harshest possible reprisal, and without apology. I don't blame anyone for inflamed passions against barbarism and in defense of the good.

Spent some time yesterday watching the youtube posts on Ace of the CNN coverage of 9/11 as it happened. Realized I've never really done this before - rewatched the live coverage. Sure, watched the excepts many times which have become "something else" over the years. Legendary doesn't seem like the right word, nor icon. Anyway, it is a strange thing re-watching the live coverage of this event. Aside from things, such as the second plane is clearly shown in the live broadcast, yet no one seems to see it. Aside from strange things like that, is this strange evil, powerful force, under control pushing through it all. Like watching a sacred event while watching the opposite of one happening at the same time. Obviously, difficult to describe. Perhaps watching the crucifixion was something like this x some very large number.

Yes, the question would be, "are there vertical ingressions from below?" I would say there must be, just as there are violent unconscious impulses that break through and overwhelm the psyche on an individual basis.

9/11 was like the Crucifixion but exactly opposite; as in say, 9/11 was caused by evil, but become sacred in time and place. Crucifixion was caused by, or out of, Divine Love and attacked by evil, then become sacred in time and space.

Maybe this is the problem with the GZM in people's hearts and minds. They "see" that both "places" are sacred (superficially), yet still not "right". Because GZ is also "deeply" sacred, in other words, no matter how deeply you look at it it remains sacred.Maybe..

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Who?! spirals down the celestial firepole on wings of slack, seizes the wheel of the cosmic bus, and embarks upin a bewilderness adventure of higher nondoodling? Who, haloed be his gnome, loiters on the threshold of the transdimensional doorway, looking for handouts from Petey? Who, with his doppelgägster and testy snideprick, Cousin Dupree, wields the pliers and blowtorch of fine insultainment for the ridicure of assouls? Who is the gentleman loaffeur who yoinks the sword from the stoned philosopher and shoves it in the breadbasket of metaphysical ignorance and tenure? Whose New Testavus for the Restavus blows the locked doors of the empyrean off their rusty old hinges and sheds a beam of intense darkness on the world enigma? Who is the Biggest Fakir of the Vertical Church of God Knows What, channeling the roaring torrent of 〇 into the feeble stream of cyberspace? Who is the masked pandit who lobs the first water balloon out the motel window at the annual Raccoon convention? Shut your mouth! But I'm talkin' about bʘb! Then we can dig it!